I Was Wondering - Part III

After spending 9 tough years in this world away from family, the grey matter in my skull finally learned one good thing…

“Everyone feels that he/she is the only one, suffering and bearing the brunt of their ill fated life...”

Then I realized, “I am not the only one suffering…”

Going by the above narration of my friend, who has asked us to share our experiences of suffering in the public domain; I suppose I could begin it from quite early in life. 9yrs…hmmmm…of the 26 years of my existence, I can vouch for around 15 that I do remember clearly, and of the 15, I do remember all of them to be in some or the other place of education.

People are of the opinion that suffering does make a man strong, but no one ever defines what suffering is. For me, education was suffering, something that always made me suffer and never gave me the experience of loving it, instead left me scarred for life remembering the many innuendoes stated (said?) by my parents, expressing the bad luck they had with me as their idiot piece of possession, who was good for nothing (not worth showing off in public as a figure of admiration), and left me hating the very concept of education, to study to prove a point, to mug up and vomit.

Let’s start with facts, I was not much of a studying type from a very early age, I could never make it to the “rank class” students and often would be left ashamed in all the PTA meets, where my parents would be in awe of the parents of the lucky merit lads. That apart, I could still, even out of shame, never be the studious type nor have I ever involved myself in any kind of outdoor activity. So, desperation and depression combined never made any changes to that streak. Instead, let’s say that I had confirmed my position in the merit pyramid set by my peers and I took pride in holding the base and stuck to it.

Out of school, I thought of expanding my wings, to choose an education of my choice and enrolled myself to do Engineering, and there again was forced with a dilemma. I wanted to do Automobile/Mechanical, being passionate about it, but popular forces (friends/family relatives and well wishers!!) forced me to leave that field to take Electronics, something that would assure me a job and place in society (hahahaha…what a joke).

Leaving the person who actually had to go through the process, everyone else suggested and I flowed along, only to find depression and desperation again, leaving myself mourning over the choice for years and at last passed it with no job (friends/family/relatives….where art thou!!).

The whole thought of flying with new wings is a big sham, it never helps especially if the flight is to be remote controlled (to the confused lot, in simple language, it’s no use of studying something that you don’t want to) but life has its own ways to deal with us, and most of us like me end up doing commercially valid courses to end up good at it, or in my case, suck at it.

Phase shift and another bright idea pops up. Education hasn’t helped me much, so let’s spend an enormous amount on it again and gamble, and I head out to pursue my masters (WTF again). So here I am, doing my MBA in a foreign university, spending lakhs of rupees, but this time a miracle! I loved studying, I loved working and as it turns out I was pretty good in my vocation, only to know that no instant jobs were available and I had to get a job (and we are back….all education that we are supposed to have has to be linked to get a job, education is secondary!!).

So having not been left with trying my luck (maybe because others knew the result), I was brought back to my own country, and try desperately to get a job (to all aspirants who seek to go to the UK to get a job…..DON’T).

Here I came to know that MBA is something that anyone can have/get and the value of a postgraduate is around 15k a month. MBA should be my fault as I did know my track record with studies, so should have been more rigid to oppose my UK trip (and I did oppose going there), but truth be told in my long boring 26 years of existence, that 1 year is all that I remember in coloured cinemascope (even though it wasn’t as COLOURFUL as others would expect), so it was more of an expensive and extensive holiday, with no gain.And then I ventured onto a new subject and learned SAP. Again as other decisions, this one too was “inspired” and “suggested” (more so was given as a last option, the other being correcting English at a call centre-transcription centre).

SAP on the other hand also was another learning process, with exams, which I passed successfully with a certificate recently. I am too new to this leg of my journey in the road of education but going by the track record, smirk is the only expression left.

Education in this way has always gone against me. I would like to add that it’s not knowledge but the system of education, acquiring knowledge was a great experience (knowledge about education also helped me rant against education).

Education helps secure jobs, hasn’t helped me. Education helps get money, doesn’t work that way too, or should I blame luck, should I blame the whole system or should I blame myself. Safest option of them all…..blame education, blaming others never cause a loss in money, but education has caused huge loses, at least for me, at least monetary.

So why shouldn’t I complain against education or rephrase Dr. Sheldon Cooper in saying “Education….thou art a bitch”? In its whole period, myself getting educated hasn’t given any sort of noticeable return other than having some degrees saying I have studied something.

May be adding to my market value in the marriage market (where my handsome looks and superb salary would fall flat/crash and burn). If it doesn’t help, then yeah, I wasted the longest and largest part of my life. The ROI on it would be zilch or zero, which by the way is another thing invented by an Indian.

Take pride in being zero, we are joined by many that we don’t know, coz we are the feathers from the same bird.